A Feast for Crows ÔÇö Arys I

In the shade of Dorne, Ser Arys Oakheart lets Arianne Martell talk him out of his white cloak and into a plot: crown Myrcella, and let Dorne rise.

The chapter retold

In Sunspear, Ser Arys Oakheart of the Kingsguard ÔÇö sworn to guard Myrcella Baratheon, sent to Dorne as a hostage-cum-fostered princess years earlier ÔÇö is slowly, deliberately talked out of his white cloak's loyalties by Arianne Martell, Doran's daughter and heir. Arianne is beautiful, clever and furious at her father's apparent passivity since Oberyn's death, and she recruits Arys not through simple seduction but through a genuine political argument: crown Myrcella under Dornish law, which allows female inheritance by right of birth order rather than favoring sons, and let Dorne rise in her name against a Lannister-Baratheon regime Arianne believes has wronged her house.

The chapter is the formal launch of Arianne's queenmaker plot ÔÇö one of the book's central schemes, and one built on a real structural fact about Dorne that the rest of Westeros keeps forgetting: Dornish succession does not prefer sons over daughters. Arys's seduction is played with real sympathy for a good, lonely knight talked into treason by a woman who genuinely believes her cause is just, which makes the scheme feel less like villainy and more like the logical extension of a house that has spent the whole series watching its rightful claims get overridden by other kingdoms' rules.

This movement: The Kingsmoot

• On Old Wyk the drowned god's captains vote: Asha offers peace, Victarion strength ÔÇö and Euron Crow's Eye offers dragons.
• The Crow's Eye takes the driftwood crown with a horn said to bind dragons, and sends Victarion to court Daenerys.
• Cersei's small war on Margaery begins: spies, whores, and a walking corpse under Qyburn's care.
• The Sand Snakes are locked away as Dorne seethes over Oberyn; Arianne plots a queen of her own.